Lexington Books Serving the Household and the Nation: Filipina Domestics and the Politics of Identity in Taiwan

Serving the Household and the Nation is an absorbing sociological study of the globalization of domestic service. Using the case of Filipina domestics in Taiwan, Cheng examines how nationalist politics shape the experience of migrant women under the context of globalization. For migrant domestics, it is often the state policy that creates their structural vulnerability in public and in private. Cheng focuses on the question of how the intervention of the state and the development of nationhood shape the localization of domestic service and explores the nexus between homemaking and nation-building. This revealing book demonstrates how the management of foreign domestics is not only important for labor control but also central to the state's administration over alien subjects, the development of nationhood, and, in this case study, the changing ethnoscape in Taiwan. Review Filipina domestic workers serve in Taiwanese households, performing labor considered dirty or degrading by their local employers. According to Cheng, they also serve the Taiwanese nation, which uses these women to define the boundaries of citizenship and race. In this eye-opening study, Cheng offers a provocative and original take on domestic service, demonstrating the link between homemaking and nation-building. A must-read for all scholars of gender and globalization.--Christine Williams, University of Texas, Austin About the Author Shu-Ju Ada Cheng is assistant professor of sociology at DePaul University.